A prolonged blackout and DSL outage left me bored and restless today. What to do in this modern world without the Internet?<br><br>Idle hands did the devil's work, and I finally stopped putting off the inevitable. I went and got an iPhone, which gets Internet even in blackouts <br><br>I'm very impressed with what I've tried so far, but I've actually been making phone calls more than anything else. And now my ear is shaped like it was pressed to a piece of glass for 2 hours.<br><br>nagr[color:red]o</font color=red>mme<br><br>I require stroyent!<br>TeamMacOSX.com | MacClan.net

Actually my car charger is still on the back of a mule from Amazon. But luckily the phone had 95% charge out of the box And the power's back on now.<br><br>This message was posted from... well, from my Mac. Old habits die hard.<br><br>nagr[color:red]o</font color=red>mme<br><br>I require stroyent!<br>TeamMacOSX.com | MacClan.net

Super Congrats - Give us a full review of how you like the iPhone , any negative stuff give that to MS because they would not know if it was because of Vista or the Zune or Xbox <br><br>[color:blue]Idle hands did the devil's work,</font color=blue> <-- keep your hands to the iPhone not sure if the touch screen can handle lubricant <br><br><br>

Expected likes:<br><br>Slim and light, great UI, does a million things, much better that Cats.<br><br>Unexpected likes:<br><br>* GPS is pinpointing me even indoors! There's no dot, but the circle is only as big as the building and it even knows which wing. Cell towers? Skyhook? I can't tell until I turn off WiFi.<br><br>* I really like the dialpad NOT being physical buttons. It actually seems easier to dial than anything I've used. No force = good!<br><br>* Ability to answer a call even in the middle of a sync or backup.<br><br>* LOUD speakerphone.<br><br>* My old iPod 4G dock works great! And being a little large, it won't rub on the phone, and doesn't block the speaker/mic. I had a long phone call on speaker while it charged. It's also wide and very stable, unlike the tiny current docks.<br><br>* Podcast and video management (never got to play with those since my old iPod had no video).<br><br>* During a call, top button toggles the display backlight instead of sending the phone to full sleep. Useful.<br><br>Expected dislikes:<br><br>* The long backup. BUT it seems to be OK to just cancel it without ill effects. Once it completes one, we'll see if it repeats or not. I have 70-80 apps and I know that's a factor.<br><br>* The AT&T rep manhandling it! Tearing off the plastic, taking the film off the screen and back, and plopping it down naked on a gritty desk to activate! No harm done though.<br><br>* My complete inability to decide how best to have the same POP mail coming to both my phone and my Mac. I guess I can probably let the phone not delete received messages. But will they then arrive on my Mac AND get marked as read? Probably not--I'll have check each email twice maybe. IMAP is not offered (and besides, I like having all my messages on MY machine and MY Time Machine backup and not in remote hands). So I haven't set up email yet.<br><br>Unexpected dislikes:<br><br>* AT&T texting me annoying welcome messages! NO THX!<br><br><br>nagr[color:red]o</font color=red>mme<br><br>I require stroyent!<br>TeamMacOSX.com | MacClan.net

Definitely Skyhook. I turned off WiFi and when indoors my location is no longer accurate--it's in the neighborhood, but clearly coming from cell towers alone.<br><br>When I turn WiFi back on, my location snaps right to the correct wing of my apartment complex! Pretty cool--Skyhook is clearly mapping residential networks, not just commercial. There are no businesses anywhere in WiFi range I'm certain.<br><br>Then I walked to the far wing of my building. As I moved, the location marker changed about half a dozen times (only two of which were off, and not by much) finally showing me correctly in the other wing! (All of which would work equally well on an iPod Touch.)<br><br>More good stuff:<br><br>* I can easily auto-sync some stuff from one computer and other stuff from another. When I plug into my iMac it syncs movies, music, contacts... everything but photos. Those I keep on my Air, and get synched when I plug in there. Perfect.<br><br>(I may even be able to have BOTH machines sync contacts/calendars/bookmarks, and the iPhone will then indirectly keep the two Macs in sync. Haven't tried that.)<br><br>* Pandora Radio (free) is too cool. FM? Who needs it?<br><br>* Shazam (free) is amazing! It "listense" to whatever music is playing in the room you are in and identifies it--with very good accuracy! It could even tell a live Portishead song from a nearly identical studio song.<br><br>* Just tried buying an app over 3G. No problemo. (3 bars.)<br><br>* Screen ships at 40% brightness and it's plenty. Full brightness is blinding. And I've noticed no annoying shifts/flickers with the auto-brightness (something I wondered about).<br><br>Next up: VNC via Mocha vs. Jaadu! My long-time dream of a pocket Mac come true!<br><br>nagr[color:red]o</font color=red>mme<br><br>I require stroyent!<br>TeamMacOSX.com | MacClan.net<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Nagromme on 08/29/08 02:24 AM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

Congrats!! Pretty amazing stuff, eh? I'm still in awe of the fact I own a computer that fits in my hand. <br><br>You're right about blackouts and times when my ISP is down for some reason. I'm still connected to my e-mail and the web. <br><br>

"So... how do you keep your iphone charged in a blackout?"<br><br>Haven't you heard? The new 3G iPhone has 5,000 hours talk time, 30,000 hours standby, plays 48 hours of video non-stop and 6 weeks of music non-stop. It's simply astounding!!!<br><br><br><br>- alec -

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